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Keeping the House in order

Some with experience in &ldquo;the chair&rdquo; were consulted about tips for the incoming federal Speaker of the House.

Steve Peters, who has been Ontario's Speaker since 2007, says he makes it a point to "jump on the personal attacks." (On 7-may-10, at 6:49 pm, agawin,)

By Jim CoyleFeature Writer

Fri., May 27, 2011

Unless things change mightily, the throngs of newly elected members of the House of Commons preparing to take their seats this week are in for one of life’s more disillusioning experiences — encountering the stark difference between the theory and practice of parliamentary life.

Along with their briefing books, new MPs should be required to read the excellent reports by the Samara democracy research organization, compiled from exit interviews with MPs who have come and gone before.

What those investigations found was that MPs consider the least productive, most embarrassing part of the job to be the Question Period follies that by far receive the most public attention.

Many cited the top-down leadership and constraint of their own parties to be their biggest frustration. Their most satisfying and productive work, it was frequently said, was in the committees seldom covered by reporters and in caucus deliberations done in secret.

So, in one of those curious little paradoxes, the bogus sound and fury of Question Period dominates the attention of a media that loves nothing so much as conflict, while the forums where partisanship might be transcended do business in obscurity.

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As to debates, they hardly merit the name in a realm of mostly empty chairs, where attention is scarcely paid, minds are virtually never changed and thoughtful oratory — as a result — is an art almost extinct.

When he retired from the Commons six years ago, no less an authority than former NDP leader Ed Broadbent said Parliament had become intellectually bankrupt, a venue more for the savage personal abuse of rabid partisans than for meaningful debate.

Things, alas, have not improved much.

Still, the commencement of any new Parliament is a triumph of hope over experience. Maybe this time, it will be different.

The first order of business is to elect a new Speaker, who, though limited in power to change the deepest of the democratic dysfunctions, will hold some sway in improving the one spectacle — Question Period — that seems to appall so many voters.

Some with experience in “the chair” were consulted about tips for the incoming federal Speaker and thoughts on how parliaments at all levels could be restored to higher regard.

Steve Peters, who’s been Ontario’s Speaker since 2007 but will not run again in the October provincial election, says meaningful change has to come from party leaders.

They must make it clear to their caucuses that “the boss doesn’t want me screamin’ and hollerin’ across the floor,” he said.

Obviously, he acknowledged, there’s a long tradition in the Westminster model for interjections and heckling.

As Roger Fitzgerald, Speaker in the House of Assembly for Newfoundland and Labrador, says: Parliament “shouldn’t be a courtroom, but it shouldn’t be a barroom either. . . it should fit in a decent manner somewhere between those two terms.”

Beautifully put. Though Canadians who follow Question Period could be forgiven for thinking matters had tilted far nearer the barroom. . . at last call.

Peters said he intervenes to demand order when he can’t hear questions or answers and he makes it a point “to jump on the personal attacks.

“Calling somebody slimy or stupid doesn’t help anything.”

As a former cabinet minister and opposition MPP, Peters understands how the game is played.

“I can remember being told, walking into my first Question Period, ‘Remember, Speaker, this is Question Period not ‘answer period’.”

Peters said he’d do away with government questions — when backbenchers lob softballs at their own ministers that amount to inquiries as to precisely why the government is so fabulous.

He also likes the Westminster system in which questions are placed with the Speaker, who then decides which member to recognize.

In Ontario, the legislature has grown more partisan and nastier over the last two decades. The iron hand of central control and party discipline has improved neither the system nor the civility of its practitioners.

Peters came to Queen’s Park from municipal government in St. Thomas.

“There are no party politics at the local government. You say it’s black, I say it’s white and, you know, we find the grey and we get on with it.

“Whereas at Queen’s Park or in Ottawa, for the most part you oppose for the sake of opposing and support for the sake of supporting.”

Many factors contribute to the current state of affairs. The introduction of TV coverage into legislatures changed behaviour both for better and for worse.

But it also “brings some theatrics to it, there’s no doubt about that,” encouraging the conflict and blunt pithiness TV demands.

Peters had another explanation. He recently invited all living former Ontario speakers to dinner. One, first elected in the ’60s, told the gathering that in his day most of the out-of-town MPPs lived at the Royal York hotel.

Since members began to receive allowances for apartments, they don’t socialize as much across party lines, don’t get to know each other.

Add to that the diminished use of and travel by legislature committees and there are fewer opportunities for developing the personal relationships from which collaboration flows.

“You know, when the committees used to travel,” Peters recalled, “the first thing one of the clerks did was go to the LCBO and get some bottles for the trip. You did spend some time together.

“I’m sorry to say I’ve got to know the opposition better in the last 3½ years (as Speaker) than during the nine years before that.”

Committees are where relationships, and the productive work that flows from them, can be built, he said.

Fitzgerald agrees. But, again, it’s up to the first minister to make changes that might cede a little control.

“It’s up to the government leader how active he wants to make committees. We’ve had premiers here who have had active committees. . . and we’ve had leaders who have only used them when it was absolutely necessary.”

As for advice to the new federal Speaker, whoever he or she might be, Speaker Dale Graham from New Brunswick kept it simple, suggesting that — especially during Question Period — it’s much like a teacher’s first day in the classroom.

“I made it very clear I would demand respect and demand decorum,” he said. “My advice for a new Speaker in Ottawa is look at the rules of the House, demand respect and follow those rules.

“If you can set the tone the first day you take the chair, people respect that.”

For Peters, the analogy is similar.

“When I talk to students, I say it’s very appropriate that the Speaker is dressed in black and white. . . because you are that referee.”

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